The View from the Middle
I’m not an Einstein, but I was always pretty good at math in school. Maybe that’s why I am shocked at how often TV commentators and even politicians confuse millions with billions and billions with trillions. Given that, I thought I would give my readers a quick illustration of just how much a TRILLION is.
Not long ago we used to think that a million dollars was a lot of money, but to make my point, let’s talk about Millions, Billions and Trillions as time instead of money. For example:
A Million seconds ago was just 12 days ago. That’s not even two weeks.
A Billion seconds was 32 YEARS ago. That was 1989, and Ronald Reagan
was still President (in January). That’s because a Billion is a thousand Million.
A Trillion seconds was 32,000 years ago, and Cro-Magnon man was still
walking the earth and that’s because a Trillion is a thousand Billion.
Hopefully, this will help you understand how much money our Congress is spending with these massive bills.
Just one bill, the Biden Build Back Better bill, will actually spend over three Trillion dollars. If those dollars were seconds, that would be almost 100,000 years ago. That’s a lot of seconds, and should remind us that if we keep spending money like this, we’ll run out of time to save our country for our children.
And right after I wrote this article my grandson asked me, “what comes after a Trillion?” I hope he never has to find out.
Genius way to quantify such huge numbers.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Paige. It is always good to hear things like this from a genius in your own right. You're the best!!
DeleteInflation is going to go through the roof. Pray for Divine Intervention, and the attainment of some much needed intelligence and backbone by “We The People”. Vote the idiots out and send some “right minded” adults to Washington to reverse all this foolishness. If you are not worried about re-election, you can vote to cancel all this pork barrel spending. Come Holy Spirit! Raise up your faithful to answer this call! Amen! Bob Irvin
ReplyDeleteAmen, brother! At a minimum, we need term limits!!
DeleteThanks for the analogy!
ReplyDeleteYou are very welcome.
DeleteWell, how much of the military budget do you want to cut? Because the military budget over the same period is approximately 2x the BBB cost.
ReplyDeleteMake me an offer. But I am willing not to even pass the Build Back Bankrupt bill.
DeleteThis doesn't really make sense as a response, except to illustrate your concerns are partisan, not substantive.
DeleteWas reading National Review this morning, and saw this blurb in a column. Always wondered why Trump never went through with this, other than his short attention span. Would have been a layup:
ReplyDelete"On Friday night, when the House passed the infrastructure bill, I thought back to the presidential campaign of 2016. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, proposed a $275 billion infrastructure plan, to be carried out over five years. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, objected to the plan, maintaining that it was chintzy: “I would say, at least double her numbers, and you’re really going to need more than that. We have bridges that are falling down.”"
It is amazing that you can bring up Donald Trump in almost any conversation. And here you make my point. I have already said that I would have preferred an infrastructure bill that about half of this $1.2 Trillion bill. That is almost exactly the number that Trump was talking about back in 2016. So I guess you are saying that Trump and me are right?
DeleteI bring up Donald Trump because he is proof positive that your objections are partisan, not substantive. And it's not your fault, necessarily, because the party has marketed this stuff to you. And what he said was "at LEAST double, and you're really going to need more than that."
DeleteI know you don't really care about the debt on our grandchildren, because if you did you wouldn't have supported the 2017 tax cut bill. You supported it though because it was Republican and you are. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it has made it hard to believe you really care about things like debt and spending.
Here's the news on the NDAA, the defense budget. It's $715 billion in a single year. Yet no one is discussing the debt, the waste, whether it's all necessary, etc. As if the Pentagon has zero record of waste or out of control spending.
ReplyDeleteMakes it pretty clear most of the GOP screaming about debt with regard to the infrastructure bill is just partisan nonsense.
I guess you haven't read any of my other articles. I am concerned about the debt and waste, yes even in the military. But maybe the most important job of our government is to protect and defend the country. The military should be a big part of our budget. Make me an offer. What would you cut it to?
DeleteAnother important job of the government is the bulk of the things the infrastructure bill includes.
DeleteDon't you find it fascinating that you believe you know all kinds of things that aren't infrastructure in that bill, yet you know nothing about a bill twice that size?
Have you asked yourself why you know about the smaller bill and not the larger one if you're concerned about debt reduction? (Hint: You're being marketed to because they know you'll be focused on partisan issues, not really debt ones)
Forgot link: https://www.rpc.senate.gov/legislative-notices/fy-2022-national-defense-authorization-act#:~:text=OVERVIEW%20OF%20THE%20ISSUE,fiscal%20year%202021%20budget%20level.
ReplyDeleteYou do make me laugh, Matt. You've made seven comments on a straight forward article. Did it help you get an appreciation for how much a Trillion dollars is?
DeleteSure it’s 1/8 of the total deficit increase during the Trump Administration.
DeleteThoughts on the NDAA of $750 billion plus in just one year?